A court in Switzerland has sentenced a Swiss publisher to a year in jail for denying that millions of Jews were exterminated in gas chambers by Nazi Germany during World War II.

The court found Gaston-Armand Amaudruz, 79, guilty of racial discrimination for writing an article on the issue in a magazine he owned with a circulation of 400 issues and for distributing 24 revisionist books.

I don't believe in the gas chambers. Let the exterminationists provide the proof and I will believe it.

Gaston-Armand Amaudruz

In the article, Mr Amaudruz stated: "For my part, I maintain my position: I don't believe in the gas chambers. Let the exterminationists provide the proof and I will believe it. But as I've been waiting for this proof for decades, I don't believe I will see it soon."

Mr Amaudruz also said it was "impossible" for six million Jews to have been murdered by the Nazis during World War II.

Sentencing him, the judge, Michel Carrard, said he had dedicated his life to racist activity and shown no remorse during his three-day trial. He also ordered Mr Amaudruz to pay court costs as well as damages of 1,000 Swiss francs to four Jewish associations which had pursued him in a related civil suit.

Last week, Amaudruz claimed his ideas were not anti-Semitic but admitted that he was openly racist.

Under Switzerland's 1995 anti-racism, it is an offence to deny, minimise or seek to justify genocide or other crimes against humanity, and the current verdict is the 10th handed down in Switzerland since it enacted in 1995 its anti-racist statute.

The heaviest sentence so far handed down was to a 48-year-old teacher, Jurgen Graf, who was ordered to spend 15 months behind bars in June last year for having published doubts in writing and on the Internet about the Nazis' systematic execution of Jews.